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Episode 279: You Have Questions, and We Have Answers to Some of Them
Date September 4, 2013 Summary Ben and Sam answer listener emails about PED placebos, deceptively bad seasons, advanced stats in fantasy baseball, and more. Topics * More walks than total bases * Origin of 'around the horn' * PED placebos * Weird ballpark features * Advanced stats in fantasy baseball * Mike Trout's Hall of Fame plaque * Metrics for hit distance * Deceptively bad seasons Intro Homestar Runner Strongbad emails sound clip Email Questions * Patrick: "In August, Pete Kozma had 7 walks and only 4 total bases over 55 plate appearances. How rare is such a feat having more walks than total bases in a month, or a half, or a season? This has to be somewhat common in truly awful players if not also your three true outcomes players. Kozma only has two outcomes it appears." * Dustin: "Hey guys, was wondering if you knew the origin of the around the diamond move that the infielders perform after a strikeout. If you don't know where it came from perhaps you could theorize on possible reasons, legitimate and hopefully also completely ridiculous, that this came about." * Heath (London): "Imagine that a Biogenesis-style clinic were to be run by a con man who claimed to be injecting players with state of the art undetectable PEDs, but was actually administering a harmless placebo. Then imagine that the records of this clinic were to be leaked to MLB. Would any action be taken against the players implicated? If you believe that no action would be taken in such a case, and given the wealth of evidence of the placebo effect even if there is very little on PEDs and performance in baseball, would an MLB team looking for an edge ever consider setting up or causing to be set up through a 3rd part such a fake clinic in order to make its players believe that they were being illegally enhanced?" * Dan: up on weird ballpark features "They basically just can't injure anyone otherwise they are fair game. I mean, Fenway's left field makes the game play totally different. Rocket line drives that might be homers turn into singles, pop outs turn into doubles. Oakland's foul ground, Yankees Stadium's right field, etc. So the question is what would be the weirdest think you could build into a ballpark that would still be considered baseball? Like, could the outfield slope down? Could you have a 550 foot center field? I was just curious where you think 'they' would draw the line." * Lee: "Are you guys surprised that advanced stats haven't really made their way into fantasy baseball yet? The huge majority of fantasy leagues still use the standard categories including wins, RBI, runs scored, and batting average. For a game like fantasy baseball where the entire concept is drafting and maintaining a team with the best players as determined by statistics, why hasn't there been more of a movement towards using stats that are at least slightly more accurate such as a simple change like using OPS+ instead of batting average?" * Rick (Seattle, WA): "Will Mike Trout wear an Angels hat on his Hall of Fame plaque?" * Patrick: "Is there any metric intended to give hitters credit for the distance they hit a ball? I find it frustrating that players hitting a ball 390 feet to dead center only to have it caught on the warning track are rewarded in no way statistically relative to the player that hits it 10 feet further and watches it crest the wall." * Mark: "I was just looking at Ken Griffey Jr.'s Fangraphs page and noticed that towards the end of his career he had two 30+ home run seasons with negative war (2005 & 2007). It looks like this is largely because his defense at that point was remarkably bad based on those Fangraphs numbers and those years were I think still relatively high offense environments in the grand scheme of things. I doubt anyone else has a 30 home run season with negative WAR, but my question to you is what you think is the most seemingly awesome season that had a dreadfully low war?" Notes * In 2000 John Jaha had 33 walks and 21 total bases in 133 plate appearances. He hit .175/.398/.216. * Ben mentions potential ballpark changes as outfield fence material, all-grass base paths, and tall grass infields. * Sam suggests changes including 80 foot walls in the entire outfield, removing walls and having elevated stands, having a home run line, and having two columns of seats stretching into left and right field. * Dan's email is related to another listener email discussed in Episode 250. * In 1999 Dante Bichette hit 34 home runs with 133 RBI and had -2.3 WAR. Links * Effectively Wild Episode 279: You Have Questions, and We Have Answers to Some of Them Category:Email Episodes Category:Episodes